People staring at their phones propel Sharknado 2 to new ratings record

Because apparently you can make a hilariously bad movie on purpose—or, more accurately, a certain segment of the population doesn’t care that you did, because they’re looking at their phones the whole time—Sharknado 2 is already Syfy’s most-watched original movie ever.

Some 3.9 million people tuned in to watch the carnivorous cyclone lay waste to New York City last night, many of them harboring Sharknado-related witticisms that they just had to get onto Twitter right away. Deadline reports that the premiere of Sharknado 2 generated 581,000 related tweets from 188,000 original users, approximately 150,000 of which were presumably, “OMG RU WATCHING SHARKNADO 2 RIGHT NOW ITS SO BAD BUT FUNNY LOL.” Normally these kinds of numbers would then lead to the greenlighting of Sharknado 3, but because it knows which side its sharknado bread is buttered, on Syfy is already way ahead of that.